Formal and informal vocabulary: choose words for the audience and genre

Common pairs include get → obtain (secure, receive); help → assist; start → begin or commence; show → demonstrate, indicate, reveal; need → require; buy → purchase; ask → enquire (also spelled inquire, particularly in American English); tell → inform; try → attempt; end → conclude; keep → retain.

Not every substitution improves a text. Commence sounds ceremonious and is characteristic of official announcements, regulations, and legal texts; begin is perfectly normal in a scientific account. Similarly, use is preferable to utilise for ordinary use. Heavy vocabulary can make writing harder rather than more authoritative.

Show, demonstrate, indicate, and prove differ in more than style. Indicate often presents a sign, while prove establishes proof; demonstrate can mean display or support convincingly. Prove is appropriate when there really is proof. Check meaning and claim strength instead of replacing words solely for formality.

Get is highly broad: it can mean receive, obtain, become, understand, or reach. Its formal alternative depends on the sense, so first identify what is happening, then select the word.

Get a permit → obtain or secure; get an email → receive; get worse → deteriorate or become worse; get the point → understand or grasp; get to the city → reach or arrive in. Obtain means acquire and does not fit where get means become or reach.

Mechanically applying get → obtain therefore produces faulty sentences: obtained worse and obtained to the station are errors of meaning, not merely style.

Big → substantial, considerable, significant; marked and sizeable are also common. These combine with abstract nouns: substantial increase, considerable difference, substantial majority. Large is more natural for physical size. In scientific reports, significant is often understood as statistically significant, so use it for merely large only where it creates no ambiguity.

Enough → sufficient or adequate: sufficient evidence places sufficient before the noun, and sufficient does not need an added enough. The negative is insufficient. Sufficient can also take to + verb: sufficient to cover the costs.

A lot of → numerous with a plural noun (numerous studies); a considerable amount of or a great deal of with an uncountable noun (a considerable amount of information). Many and much are neutral and also appropriate. About before a number → approximately; pretty → fairly or relatively; really → highly, particularly, especially where the meaning fits; very is neutral and perfectly acceptable.

Vague evaluations such as good, nice, and awesome provide little specific information. Name the quality instead: beneficial, effective, favourable.

Kids → children, or pupils or participants depending on context; boss → manager or supervisor; stuff and things → a specific noun such as materials, equipment, items, or factors. Stuff and things leave information unnamed that formal writing should identify.

Kids is everyday rather than vulgar; children is neutral and suitable in most contexts. In this pair, precision matters more than formality: select a word matching the people's age and role.

Sometimes the more formal word is simply more precise. Link is perfectly correct in a sentence about diet and health, but correlation names a specific kind of relationship, a statistical association. Replace it only when that is what you mean.

After replacing a word, check its pattern: assist someone with something or assist in doing something. In the sense tell someone, inform normally names the recipient: inform someone that… or inform someone of/about something. Other senses of inform, such as shape an approach, have different objects: evidence informs policy.

Require + noun or require + person + to + verb; sufficient + noun or sufficient to + verb; attempt + to + verb; enquire + about or into + noun, or enquire + whether / wh-clause (do not put a person directly after enquire as its object); demonstrate + that-clause or noun.

A word with a different pattern cannot be substituted one for one: help us do ≠ assist us do. After changing it, check the preposition, following verb form, and noun countability.

Formality does not mean complexity. Academic writing guidance warns against both casual vocabulary and excessive grandness: utilise where use is enough makes a text harder to read, not more authoritative. Neutral use, show, begin, and help are all common in journal articles.

Before replacing a word, ask four questions. Who will read this? Is the wording conversational or vague (stuff, loads of, really)? Does the new word preserve the meaning and grammatical pattern? Does the text still sound natural?

The same principle works in reverse. In a friendly message, conversational, specific wording is a good choice; it does not need decorative formal synonyms.